New York Timezzzzzzzzzzz…….

Pay attention.. this is important stuff.. no, really. Pay attention.. hey you, wake up!

So the New York Times has launched TimesCast, its daily ‘live from the newsroom’ webcast.

Well, this is only about two years behind The Newark Star Ledger’s Ledger Live, with Brian Donohue.

The New York Times is not exactly breaking new ground here. In fact, they are late to the party.

Really late.

And compared to the eminently watchable, entertaining and informative Ledger Live, it is also a poor second.. or maybe fifth. The Times could learn a lot from The Ledger.

A lot. Not that they will…

(and now, the history part).

Many years ago, Punch Sulzberger bought VNI, one of my businesses, from me and that became New York Times TV.

The mandate was to create programs from the contents of The New York Times, and sell it to cable channels.

The folks at the paper thought that the cable channels would fall all over themselves at a chance to put The New York Times contents and name on the air.

Uh…. no.

Not exactly.

In fact, not only did no one, from Discovery to National Geographic to A&E  care, they actively didn’t want it.

The folks at the paper found this hard to believe, they were so in love with themselves.  One of the ideas that the newspaper came up with for a sure-fire TV show was ‘crossworld puzzle’.  Another was ‘morning meeting’ where we would have a birds-eye view of the NY Times newspaper morning meeting.   The folks at Discovery could not stop laughing when we pitched this one. The people at Nat Geo just stared incredulously. “Do you understand that this is television”?

Now comes TimesCast, which begins, miraculously, in the paper’s newsroom.

snore…. (what? Oh yeah, that was sure interesting..).

To say it is boring is to give it some credit. To say it had some redeeming quality. It has none.

Who cares?  Who cares what goes on in the NY Times newsroom morning meeting.  Even some of the Times people are having trouble keeping their eyes open. To film it, in real time, with multiple cameras no less, is shocking. Who in their right mind would want to watch this?

Here’s a good test of the value of the journalism.

Why doesn’t The New York Times take the transcripts of these scintillating sessions and simply publish them verbatim on the front page of the paper.  Above the fold, since you start your 6 minute webcast with them. If you think this stuff is so great, put it in ink on the front page.  Do it for a week.

Would the paper ever publish this kind of unedited drivel and consider it great writing and great reporting? I doubt it.

The New York Times has a well deserved reputation for great journalism, great writing, great reporting.  This video is none of these. None of them.

Why is it that when print people turn on a video camera they think that anything that moves is a success.

If the NY Times wants to get into the business of webcasting, then the video has to be the same quality as that which they would publish in the paper.

TimesCast is not.

Definitely not.